The event is part of a weekend dedicated to Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet’s engagement with the work of the German philosopher and poet Friedrich Hölderlin. When you purchase a ticket for this event you will receive a promotional code to enjoy a discount of 50% on any Hölderlin event at the Goethe-Institut on 12.4. and 13.4. Further events are the screenings of Der Tod des Empedokles + Schwarze Sünde, O Somma Luce + Cézanne... and a lecture by theatre expert Patrick Primavesi.
Der Bräutigam... (
The Bridegroom…) is a film in which the oppression of women is very clear (Huillet). It begins with a documentary shot of a Munich red-light district at night to which all the other elements in the film respond to in a dialectical way: the music of Bach, the staging of a play,
Pains of Youth (1929) by Ferdinand Bruckner, condensed by Straub and performed by the actors of the Munich action–theater, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder; two poems by the Spanish mystic poet Juan de La Cruz as told by the protagonists of a love story, shot as a
film noir.
Antigone extended Straub and Huillet’s practice of textual archaeology and their interest in stratification. In this film they take Hölderlin’s German translation of Sophocles’ text of
Antigone as reworked politically by Bertolt Brecht, staging the play in the old theatre of Segesta in the highest peak of Mount Barbaro in Western Sicilia. Barton Byg wrote: ‘While WWII was Brecht’s contemporary reference, it is the First Gulf War here; Straub-Huillet keep Antigone’s confrontation with Creon entirely historical. Only the bracketing sounds of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s music and a military helicopter gesture toward the present. But the film’s final text is Brecht’s warning in 1952 against those who prepare the wars of the future.’ Brecht wrote: ‘In
Antigone the violence is explained by inadequacy. The war against Argos derives from mismanagement. Those who have been robbed have to look to robbery themselves. The undertaking exceeds the strength available. Violence splits the forces instead of welding them together; basic humanity, under too much pressure, explodes, scattering everything with it into destruction.’
The Antigone of Sophocles... will be shown on a new 35mm print.
Der Bräutigam, die Komödiantin und der Zuhälter, The Bridegroom, the Actress and the Pimp, West Germany, Dir: Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 1968, 35mm/Digital, b&w, 23 min., in German with English subtitles.
Die Antigone des Sophokles nach der Hölderlinschen Übertragung für die Bühne bearbeitet von Brecht 1948 (Suhrkamp Verlag), The Antigone of Sophocles after Hölderlin’s Translation Adapted for the Stage by Brecht 1948, Germany, 1991, 35mm, colour, 100 min., in German with English subtitles.
On the same day at 4pm, theatre expert Patrick Primavesi will give a lecture entitled ‘Stages of Violence. Antigone by Straub/Huillet, between theatre and film.’
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